Personal Data Assistants (PDAs) are becoming increasingly popular, and several manifestations of the concept are currently on the market. One such manifestation (i.e., form factor) is the PDA watch, such as the Data Link manufactured by Timex and the BZX207SCR PC Unite watch manufactured by Casio. The advantage of PDA watches is that they are small, easily portable, and always available since they are attached to a person's wrist. The disadvantage is that entering information (i.e., data entry) is extremely difficult, so spontaneously entering data is tedious. Characters are generally entered by scrolling through the alphabet using the buttons on the side of the watch. If the supported character set is 36 characters (A-Z, 0-9), then the user may have to depress the button as many as 18 times to advance to the desired letter/number. Since, on average the user will have to press the button nine times per character, a fifteen character message will require 135 button presses. Another method for data entry into a PDA watch that has been utilized is to enter the data on a personal computer and then download it to the watch. This method is even more tedious than the former so that it is rarely used by owners of PDA watches. Additionally, the entering of information into the PDA watch requires that the user be near their personal computer, and thus remote entry of data is not possible.
As a result of the foregoing, there is a need in the art for an improved mechanism for data entry into a PDA watch.